Greeter – Charlie Langreder watched the eclipse on his driveway with his wife, Bonnie. He is attending physical therapy three times a week after rotary cuff surgery. His therapist tells him she will have him ready to return to hunting by the last week of bow season. His surgeon says no way. Either way he is motivated to improve his right shoulder. Also, Charlie was able to check some of his 70 cameras along the White River. He saw lots of white tail deer but no bucks.

Announcements

Sign In and badge or Pay the Pig: all were signed in.

Scrap Book- Club scrapbooks were entered and judged at the 4th quarter E. MO district meeting in St. Louis. DO newsletter scrapbook took 2nd place with tough competition from several clubs. Thank you Mary Dewey for putting together some of the best scrapbooks at the meeting.

AA points. DO Optimist Club reported the highest number of AA points for its division in the E MO district and received a $25 check.

Optimist Red Leighton – At the District meeting Red was recognized for recruiting over 150 Optimist members and Ed Musterman accepted a framed certificate and special pin on his behalf. Appreciation at the district meeting was expressed loudly and long.

Honor Club – It appears that with the two new membership applications Rick McKernan has in hand that the Downtown Optimists will qualify as Honor Club if a contribution is made to the OI Foundation for any amount.

Board Meeting – Requests from Columbia Youth Basketball and Ronald McDonald House were heard. Ronald McDonald House was granted. The board regretfully tabled the Columbia Youth Basketball request to October. Their request was small but it was the second in the same fiscal year. The board reluctantly accepted the resignation of Max Miller as a board member.

Tony Parisio has accepted the invitation to join the board to fill out the remainder of Max’s term ending September 30, 2018.

Sept 11, Steve Winters to present Koeze sales plan. Steve was deployed to Nebraska for exercises as part of Task Force 1 and Sean Spence was good enough to move up his scheduled date as a guest speaker to today.

Today’s Speaker

Sean Spence, Better Business Bureau, Ethics Instruction in the High School program

Most people think of the BBB as a clearing house for people searching for a product or service from a reputable business. To this end the BBB evaluates and accredits local businesses and makes their findings available to anyone seeking information. In former times business was done on a handshake but that has not always worked in a larger more complex society. The BBB sees its mission as Building Trust in the Community by evaluating and accrediting businesses.

The BBB has expanded its role in creating trust by providing ethics seminars to school children and groups. Partnering with Schnuck’s and other businesses, the BBB has put together a complete curriculum on ethics and presented it to school teachers. Sean has given four talks to Douglas H.S. students, worked with Battle H.S. and presented at the Elden Resource Center. Today he came to give an interactive mini-seminar of the work he does with students.

In a 2011 Survey high school students who were given the opportunity to respond anonymously to some basic ethical questions. The results showed: one in three (1 in 3) students admitted to stealing, eight of ten (8 of 10) lied to their parents, 59% cheated on a test and one in three (1 in 3) admitted to plagiarizing written assignments from the internet. When presented this information, the majority of current students (8 of 10) say these numbers are too low. So the question Sean posed to the group is whether ethics should be taught in schools or left to other societal institutions of Family, Religion, Employment and Politics. He posed the situation his wife encountered when one of her students, a 17 year old physically attractive girl whose mother is a stripper and father pimps for her mother was encouraged by her parents to forgo higher education for the money she can make as a stripper in LasVagas. (Retirement planning?)

Sean posed some questions to the group: Is it a good idea to be an ethical person? Are there times better for you to be unethical? Are there situational ethics? What is your personal framework for decision making?: (What family says and does? What religions teach? What parents teach their children? Tummy check on how this decision feels in your gut?) He offered an acronym to structure decision making: H.E.A.R.T. Will my decision Hurt someone? Will it benefit Everyone involved? A… Is it Responsible? Is it Transparent (Can I publish it in the newspaper)? These are the values this curriculum uses for ethical decision making. It deliberately leaves out religious and politically partisan values for a more generic and universal path to an ethical life.